Tabloid Tales of the Past

The Rome Free Academy baseball team extended its winning streak to six games on Friday by pounding out 11 hits in an 11-5 victory over Fayetteville-Manlius at the Stadium.

B Sharp Musical Club members and guests will present a free concert Sunday at Zion Episcopal Church. Performers will include the Junior B Sharp String Quartet.

April 26, 1992

Every day more than 400 children in Rome school have breakfast with their friends in the school cafeteria rather than at home with their families.

April 26, 1982

Empire Airlines has its fourth and fifth Dutch-built planes in service. Each aircraft costs $12 million and can carry 85 passengers.

April 26, 1972

Dr. Frederic Grunberg, deputy state commissioner of mental hygiene, spoke at the Rome State School annual anniversary dinner in the Beeches.

April 26, 1962

BOONVILLE — A 48-bed nursing home, to cost around $175,000, will be constructed here. It is to be owned and operated by Mr. and Mrs. Louis C. Britton, who have operated the Sunset Nursing and Maternity Hospital in Constableville.

Today is Thursday, April 26, the 117th day of 2012. There are 249 days left in the year.

Today in History

On April 26, 1937, German and Italian warplanes raided the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, resulting in widespread destruction; estimates of the number of people killed vary greatly, from the hundreds to the thousands. (The raid inspired Pablo Picasso’s famous antiwar painting, "Guernica.")

On this date:

In 1607, English colonists went ashore at present-day Cape Henry, Va., on an expedition to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere.

In 1785, American naturalist, hunter and artist John James Audubon was born in present-day Haiti.

In 1865, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was surrounded by federal troops near Port Royal, Va., and killed. (As he lay dying, Booth looked at his hands and gasped, "Useless, useless.")

In 1909, Abdul Hamid II was deposed as sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

In 1945, Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, the head of France’s Vichy government during World War II, was arrested.

In 1952, the destroyer-minesweeper USS Hobson sank in the central Atlantic after colliding with the aircraft carrier USS Wasp with the loss of 176 crew members.

In 1962, the NASA spacecraft Ranger 4 crashed into the moon as planned after failing to transmit images and data.

In 1968, the United States exploded beneath the Nevada desert a 1.3 megaton nuclear device called "Boxcar."

In 1972, the first Lockheed L-1011 TriStar went into commercial service with Eastern Airlines.

In 1986, a major nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union).

In 1992, Moscow saw its first publicly observed Russian Orthodox Easter in 74 years.

In 2000, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signed the nation’s first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.

Ten years ago

Robert Steinhaeuser, an expelled student, went on a shooting rampage at a school in Erfurt, Germany, killing 16 people, plus himself. David Gunn, who had run transit systems in New York City and Washington, was named president of Amtrak, the troubled national rail passenger service.

Five years ago

The Senate joined the House, 51-46, in clearing legislation calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq to begin by Oct. 1, 2007, with a goal of a complete pullout six months later (President George W. Bush later vetoed the measure).